Rally to defend Taiwan ex-leader

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An estimated 3,000 people have taken part in a rally to protest at what they say is an attack on the legacy of Taiwan's late leader Chiang Kai-shek.

Recently the government has removed statues and renamed monuments honouring the island's authoritarian president.

It says Taiwan is now a flourishing democracy and anachronistic legacies of the authoritarian past must go.

Mr Chiang once governed all China but fled to Taiwan in 1949, after losing a civil war to Mao Zedong's Communists.

The BBC's Caroline Gluck in Taipei says Chiang Kai-shek today remains a highly controversial figure.

Some regard him as a great statesman who brought prosperity to the island, others revile him for establishing one-party military rule and ordering a violent crackdown on opponents, our correspondent says.

'Very much evil'

Waving flags and blowing horns, supporters of the Kuomintang (KMT), or Nationalist party, now the main opposition party, took part in the rally in the capital, Taipei.

They symbolically paraded around a memorial square dedicated to Chiang Kai-shek.

The government wants to rename the city landmark as the Taiwan Democracy Memorial Park, but controversial cabinet plans to tear down the outer walls have temporarily been put on hold as city officials consider calls for the building to be protected as a cultural and historical monument.

You are going to create hatred between two basic groups of people - one from mainland, one originally in Taiwan - and you are going to further divide the society Protest organiser John Chiang

The government plans are the latest in a series of steps to remove statues of the former president from military barracks and public buildings and erase his name from many monuments.

But protest organiser and KMT legislator, John Chiang -the late president's grandson - has accused the government of trying to stoke ethnic and political tensions.

"We have to wake them up. You are going to push the entire nation to the very dangerous position. You are going to create hatred between two basic groups of people - one from mainland, one originally in Taiwan - and you are going to further divide the society.

"It's not only stupid, it's immoral and it is very much evil. We cannot accept it," he said.